It can be difficult sometimes to reconcile our desire to be environmentally responsible with a need for the everyday items in our lives. One such area is in furnishing our homes – but pine furniture offers a way of living in some comfort while still avoiding destruction of the world’s forests.
It is an alarming fact that an area the size of Britain is lost from the Amazon rainforests every nine months. This is due to a lack of alternative income for the poor local population, combined with irresponsible consumption. It cannot be sustained.
Fortunately the pine forests of Scandinavia have been properly managed for decades and as a result are able to supply enough material for Europe’s pine furniture needs without depleting the world’s timber reserves. Trees are like any other crop, except that the intervals between harvest are 40 years or more, rather than every year. A good system of harvesting, replanting and management meets our pine furniture needs from the forests without destroying them.
In the UK, most suppliers of pine furniture use timber from these sustainably managed forests for their products. Devonshire Pine Ltd for example, is one of the UK’s last remaining large-scale pine furniture manufacturers and imports all its pine from Scandinavian sources.
Another environmental advantage of such an operation is that the timber has travelled only a relatively short distance from forest to end user, compared with the much large shipping distances from South America. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a good source of information about sustainable forestry in tropical countries but, as a rule of thumb, furniture such as pine furniture from ‘local’ sources is usually the best option.
